Another miserable day: wet and breezy.

Liminal is an overused word these days. It was a technical term in anthropology for a long time, but its expansion in meaning from a transitional state in a rite of passage to a more general state of being ‘between’ is more recent. I haven’t pinpointed quite when that happened–liminal isn’t even in my 1989 edition of Chambers English Dictionary (except as a component part of subliminal), so it, together with liminality, must have come into popular usage since then, possibly via the psychogeographers, or through literary theory.

suppose they gave a catastrophe and nobody died; Barbados, January 2012

Be that as it may, I sense that we are still in liminal days, in transit between one normality and another. That’s a trite observation, but the sense was strong today.

I’m not thinking only of the virus and all that will flow from it, I’m thinking more broadly. I hinted at it the other night when I mentioned in passing that the arctic is burning. Catastrophism is a seductive thing, and like all seductive things can overwhelm and dominate your thinking, can become the interpretive framework of your senses and perceptions.

I am not given generally to catastrophism. History is full of people predicting the end of the world and finding themselves still here, embarassed, the day after. And I’m not going there.

But.

Not only are we in an intersticial state regarding the way our daily lives are led (and still between phases of the current pandemic which is by no means over), we are also coming out of the two and a half centuries of industrialisation behaving in a way that means we will not reverse, or even mitigate, the damage we’ve done to the climate. For a moment there, in late March and through April and May, we had a glimpse of an alternative. Too little, too late.

That makes me sound more gloomy than I am. But not much.

***

I took a walk along to the supermarket this afternoon, as much to use my legs as anything else. Things are definitely busier, though not yet back to pre-lockdown levels. My impression again is that more people are using masks in store, though it isn’t a majority. I did notice our local guitar shop is now open, although with restricted entry. I doubt they’d be keen to let someone in just to have a noodle on whatever is on the racks. Having said that, I’m playing so little at the moment it would be a bit of a waste of time going in, except for strings.

Also, I bought a kit electric guitar a few years back that I haven’t built. That would be a fun project later in the year, once I’ve finished the mandolin I started but haven’t finished…

***

Music: I was tempted by REM; I was also looking for something Persian/Iranian because I enjoyed Samirah Ahmed’s Art Of Persia and finally found out today where they sourced the (uncredited) music. Instead I’m going old school.

Mary O’Brien’s life was more chaotic than her management let it be known at the time, but boy could she sing.